1. Field of the invention
The present invention relates to an information searching apparatus to search and output information such as documents, drawings and the like stored in a memory device such as a photodisc or the like.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Recently, there have been developed image information searching apparatuses which are constituted in a manner such that: image information such as documents, drawings or the like which are produced in great quantities is read by way of two-dimensional optical scan; this read image information and the search data corresponding thereto are sequentially stored in an auxiliary memory medium of a large memory capacity such as, for example, a photodisc device; upon searching, the search data is preliminarily read out from the photo disc device into a main memory device; the search code corresponding to this search data is inputted (key word search), thereby detecting and reading out the image information stored in the photodisc device; and this image information is outputted to an output apparatus, for example, a CRT display apparatus.
However, according to the foregoing apparatus, a large amount of image information is processed and the accessing speed of the photodisc device having a large memory capacity is slower than that of a semiconductor memory or a magnetic disc device. Therefore, after the last search code was inputted, it takes a long time until the searched image information is read out from the photo disc device and is displayed in the CRT display device when considering the seeking time and data reading time of the photodisc device, the data transfer times among respective peripheral apparatuses, converting time of the compression-coded image data into the image data, or the like. Thus, the image search working efficiency remarkably deteriorates.